LightsOut Restore Setup Problem

I am a long-time user of Norton Ghost.  I recently purchased three single computer licenses for Norton Ghost 15.0.  I installed two of them on identical HP desktop computers running Windows 7 Ultimate (32 bit).  Everything works fine on those two computers and I was able to set up LightsOut Restore without any problems.

 

The third one I installed on a new HP Powerbook laptop running Windows 7 Professional (64 bit).  I went through the set up for LightsOut Restore and it finished normally asking if I wanted to test it – to which I replied “yes”.  When the computer restarted it booted directly into windows without presenting the boot option screen.

 

I did a little investigating and noticed that the hidden “Srd” directory had been created on the C drive.  However, besides creating this directory the LightsOut setup should have placed some entries in the Boot Configuration Data (BCD) Store and put the “Symantec LightsOut Restore” option in the boot menu.

 

I located the BCD store which is contained in the first subkey (BCD00000000) under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE in the system registry.  The setup should have created two objects under that key – a loader for lightsout restore and an object containing the ramdisk options.  It should then have added the lightsout loader to the boot menu.  LO restore setup failed to create the necessary registry keys and to add the option to the boot menu.  I examined the BCD store with a handy free utility – Visual BCD Editor.  The only loaders appearing in the BCD were “Windows 7” and “Windows Recovery Environment” – the “Symantec LightsOut Restore” loader was missing.

 

I examined the BCD on my desktop computers with the same utility – both contained a loader for Symantec LightsOut Restore as well as the loaders for Win 7 and the recovery environment.

 

Other than the 32 bit versus 64 bit versions of Windows 7, the only other difference I noticed was that the desktops boot up out of a boot directory located on the C drive whereas the new 64 bit laptop boots up out of directory located in a hidden partition (SYSTEM).

 

It seems obvious to me that the LO setup routine does not work properly in all operating environments.  I contacted Symantec support and had an on-line chat with an analyst which was completely unproductive.  He assigned a s Case ID of 0919109 and said that he would escalate the problem to “Level 2” and that I would be receiving an follow-up email.  I received an email requesting a time when I could be contacted by telephone.  I responded with a detailed description of the problem and a 5 hour window within which I would be available by telephone.  The telephone call did not come.

 

I will continue working on this problem since I doubt that Symantec will address it.  In the meantime, any ideas?

 

I used a free tool called "EasyBCD" to manually add the option to boot to the Ghost .wim file, ending up with my own "lights out restore".

 

I made a custom recovery disk so I could add my serial number into it and be able to make images from the recovery disk without entering my license.

Then in the "Sources" folder of the CD I took "Boot.wim" and moved it to the C drive and renamed it Ghost.wim.

Then I used easybcd to add that into a boot menu option.

 

It now can boot into that wim file exactly how booting to the recovery disk or using lights out restore does.

 

Dave

 

What Dave said and this,,,

I made a cold backup of my wife's HP laptop before the first time it was ever booted (I think). There are 4 partitions...

 

SYSTEM

C Drive

RECOVERY

HP_TOOLS

 

3 of the 4 partitions have BCD files! I'll bet LOR added the option to the wrong one.

 

Like Dave said, you could use EasyBCD to add the wim file to the boot menu. Since you already have the SRD folder, the wim file should be in there.

 

 

I just looked at the backup of my daughter's laptop and it is the same... 3 BCD files!

 

Ghostwim.jpg

 

 

Actually, I think it was Red who suggested this first, thanks Red.

 

This system has an older version of EasyBCD and I don't have it setup to boot Ghost this way.

But it will give you an idea of how it's done.

 

It's under "add remove entires" you need to use the arrow to scroll over to the right to "WinPE".

Note that it boots the wim file into a RAM disk, that allows you to recover into the same partition because the hard drive is no longer in use after it boots the wim file into RAM.

 

Name it whatever you want to see on the boot menu and use the button with 3 dots on it to browse to the location of the wim file.

 

It's best to rename the wim file to Ghost.wim so you don't confuse it with any windows wim files.

 

Dave

Thanks for the replies.  I also found a solution to the problem - perhaps a little more complicated than yours.  Recall that I had successfully set up LO restore on my desktop.  Using regedit I exported the two registry keys (the lightsout loader and the ramdisk options) that LO setup had failed to put into the BCD store section of the registry on the laptop.  I then imported those keys into the laptop's registry and added the loader to the boot menu using Visual BCD Editor.  I suspected that there might be a problem with the ramdisk options since they are concerned with devices which are obviously different between the desktop and the laptop.  Sure enough, when I selected the "Symantec LightsOut Recovery" option at boot-up I received a "missing device" error.  Next I located the ramdisk options key on the laptop used by the "Windows Recovery Environment" loader.  Using Notepad I copied the Hex string from that registry key and pasted it over the corresponding hex string in the ramdisk options key I had imported from the desktop.  It works!  I can now get into the recovery environment at boot-up.

 

Your solution is certainly easier than mine as it is "stand alone" and does not require a LO setup on another computer.  Regardless, we should not have to jump through these kinds of hoops.  It is evident that this product does not work properly in all operating environments and Symantec should have fixed it.  Thanks again for the help.